Dear Editor,

When news of the death of Rev Earl Thames came to me I quietly bemoaned the fact that I had lost a friend of 40 years. But he was more than a friend, I looked up to him as an intellectual big brother and spiritual mentor on whom I eagerly called for help with controversial spiritual, biblical or philosophical issues.

I recall being one of his students in the philosophy course he taught at the Jamaica Theological Seminary. He it was, in retrospect, who stimulated my abiding interest in philosophical studies. He oozed a delightful mix of a clean, informed mind and a godly spirit.

It should be noted that he was the first, and perhaps the only Jamaican Rhodes scholar to have served the country as a pastor. (Rev Ronald Thwaites is close, but though he too is a Rhodes scholar and a clergyman, he is not a pastor in the traditional sense.)

Rev Thames earned degrees in law, political science and theology. This fact should silence the ignorance of critics of clergy people who tackle controversial issues in the marketplace of ideas who dismiss us with the inane quip “stick to the Bible”.

My friend Earl was quite a well-rounded human being, a kind of renaissance man who excelled in the arts (music, elocution, drama), in academia as well as in sports (football, table tennis, he represented Jamaica in lawn tennis, I think he told me). Though I am a trained musician, it was only at his funeral, on Tuesday, September 6, that I learned that he was the composer of the Jamaican hymn

Jesu, Lord sung to the tune of ‘Yellow Bird’.

After completing his LLB degree at Oxford, Earl was preparing to be called to the Bar but heeded, instead, a higher calling from his Lord to prepare for the ordained Christian ministry. He served as a pastor within the United Church of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands for almost 53 years, and I gather that summer camps became one of his special areas of ministry to youth up to the time of his passing.

The erudite Rev Earl Thames was genuinely humble, almost self-effacing and characterised by a gentle, smiling ‘may-I-help’ demeanour. I still register a thrill of profound respect for him when I recall a radio dialogue we had on

Love 101 FM, in which he recounted his experience sharing his faith (witnessing) on the trains in London while he was a student at Oxford.

It is possible, though not likely, but I still say it, “May his scholar/saint tribe increase.”

Sleep on, my beloved brother, until faith becomes sight.

Rev Clinton Chisholm

clintchis@yahoo.com